Her Seasoned Delivery
Release date: October 24, 2022
Series: Stand-alone novella
Genre: Rom-com
Tropes: Later-in-life lovers, IVF pregnancy, strong heroine, cinnamon bun hero
About the story
The chemistry between Stirling & Magdalena sizzles throughout this wonderfully hot, quick read! This story is like gourmet take-out for your Kindle!
MAGDALENA
All I had to do was make it through the last two months of my so-called ‘geriatric’ pregnancy and it would have been smooth sailing from there. Bedrest? That was not part of the IVF treatment contract. Nor was the clam smoothie craving that only one restaurant in the city could satisfy—but refused to blend for take-out or delivery. These twins are going to eat me alive before they even have birth certificates.
STIRLING
Some kids are born with a silver spoon in their mouth—I was born with a silver spatula in my hand, the namesake of three generations of executive chefs in the only Michelin star-rated restaurant in Canada. But one lousy heart attack took that all away. Now I’m richer than Colonel Sanders with as much purpose in life as a broken wish bone. Until a gorgeous woman with a desperate desire for a secret recipe, and someone to make it for her, virtually lands in my lap.
Her Seasoned Delivery is a spicy, later-in-life rom com between a grumpy chef who needs a kitchen and a quirky single mom-to-be who needs to be fed. This laugh-out-loud stand-alone novella has an HEA guaranteed to make you swoon.
Read an excerpt
Excerpt from Stirling & Magdalena’s first meeting
MAGDALENA
I’m not giving up without a fight. And neither are my twin moochers.
I wait until the manager looks up from the keyboard before making my case.
“Do you have kids?” I ask.
She shakes her head.
Dammit.
“A sister who has kids?”
She squints and barely nods.
Yes! “Please imagine your sister has just been condemned for the next eight weeks of her life to her bed. And the only food—the only healthy food—she can swallow without wanting to hurl is the clam smoothie made at this establishment. You’d go out of your way to make sure she got it. Wouldn’t you?”
The man at the table to my side starts coughing, drawing both mine and the manager’s attention to him.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
He coughs two more times, shaking his head. “Clam smoothie? Since when do we make … ,” he stops mid-sentence and I turn my attention back to the manager.
“If you don’t have take-out cups I’ll have my own brought over. I need this drink.” I pat my belly. “They need this drink.”
“They?” she asks, eyebrows disappearing under her bangs.
“Twins. Expressing their picky eating habits already. There must be a way to make this work.”
“Look up the recipe on the internet?” the manager offers.
I muster my negotiator voice. “Number one, I have tried to replicate the flavor myself. I can’t even come close. Number two, bedrest.”
“Husband?” she counters.
“Single,” I growl.
“Damn.” The curse seems to slip from her mouth without her intending to say it out loud.
“Since when are clam smoothies on the menu?” the nosy but handsome man interrupts.
The manager glares and points at him. “Not your concern, Stirling.”
I spin to face him directly. “Stirling? As in, the name on the sign outside the restaurant, Stirling Cox?”
“Maybe,” he mumbles.
“Not any more,” the manager corrects.
The kids decide this is a perfect time to practice their jabs. “Oh!” I double over and grab the back of the chair at the table this Stirling character sits at.
He jumps to his feet and guides me to the bench side where he’d been seated, and holds my elbows and my weight as I lower myself down.
“Thank you.” I press my palms over my belly, firmly enough to let the hooligans know I’m not impressed. “Sir, when your wife was pregnant did she have cravings? Can you please make an exception?”
He shakes his head. “No wife. No kids. And not my call.”
The young man who’d taken my order stands with my drink in a tall glass.
“Shall I take it to your table, Ma’am?”
“Leave it here,” Mr. No Wife, No Kids instructs.
As soon as the glass touches the table I reach for it, bringing the cool metal straw to my lips and taking a long, slow, heavenly pull. I might have moaned. Okay, by the look on Stirling Cox’s face, I most definitely moaned. I don’t care. Another long sip, another long moan of pleasure.
“There. You happy now?” I say patting my spawn on their wee heads—or maybe their butts or their feet, all the bumps feel the same.
“How long have you been drinking these things?” Mr. ‘Staring at me like I’m insane’ asks. Now that the karate drills in my belly have subsided, I can finally see clearly enough to appreciate the man who managed to gracefully lower my 212 pounds with such ease. For a flash of a second I wish I’d met him before I chose an anonymous sperm donor. I would have definitely asked this hot restaurateur for the honor of cracking open my eggs.
I push the straw from my lips but keep the glass close to my face. “Every day for the last seven or eight weeks.”
He doesn’t take his eyes off me while I take another sip. “What do you do on Monday when the restaurant is closed?”
“I suffer. And experiment. Try to recreate this nectar of the goddess.”
He reaches his hand toward my drink. “May I?”
I clutch the glass closer to my chest and shake my head.
He chuckles. “I just want to smell it. Maybe I can help.”
“You can help by changing your dumb rule and letting me have these delivered to my home until my clam addicted babies are born.”
“It’s not my dumb rule. I don’t own the place anymore. But, I might be able to tell you what’s in it.” He looks up and around. “Just don’t tell Cecilia. It would put both of us in a difficult position.”
